the cruelty or folly of that economy which, to leave a fortune to a child, starves his intellect, impoverishes his heart.

MILTON AND JOHNSON.

We have enlarged on Milton's character, not only from the pleasure of paying that sacred debt which the mind owes to him who has quickened and delighted it, but from an apprehension that Milton has not yet reaped his due harvest of esteem and veneration. The mists which the prejudices and bigotry of Johnson spread over his bright name, are not yet wholly scattered, though fast passing away. We wish not to disparage Johnson. We could find no pleasure in sacrificing one great man to the manes of another. But we owe it to Milton and to other illustrious names to say that Johnson has failed of the highest end of biography, which is to give immortality to virtue, and to call forth fervent admiration towards those who have shed splendor on past ages. We acquit Johnson, however, of intentional misrepresentation. He did not, and could not, appreciate Milton. We doubt whether two other minds, having so little in common as those of which we are now speaking, can be found in the higher walks of literature. Johnson was great in his own sphere, but that sphere was comparatively "of the earth," whilst Milton's was only inferior to that of angels. It was customary, in the day of Johnson's glory, to call him a giant, to class him with a mighty but still an earth-born race. Milton we should rank among seraphs. Johnson's mind acted chiefly on man's actual condition, on the realities of life, on the springs of human action, on the passions which now agitate society, and he seems hardly to have dreamed of a higher state of the human mind than was then exhibited. Milton, on the other hand, burned with a deep yet calm love of moral grandeur and celestial purity. He thought, not so much of what man is, as of what he might become. His own mind was a revelation to him of a higher condition of humanity, and to promote this he thirsted and toiled for freedom, as the element for the growth and improvement of his nature. In religion, Johnson was gloomy and inclined to superstition, and on the subject of government leaned towards absolute power; and the idea of reforming either never entered his mind but to disturb and provoke it. The church and the civil polity under which he lived seemed to him perfect, unless he may have thought that the former would be improved by a larger infusion of Romish rites and doctrines, and the latter by an enlargement of the royal prerogative. Hence a tame acquiescence in the religion and government marks his works. 'ittle in his writings which is electric and

present forms of Hence we find so soul-kindling, and

which gives the reader a consciousness of being made for a state of loftier thought and feeling than the present. Milton's whole soul, on the contrary, revolted against the maxims of legitimacy, hereditary faith, and servile reverence for established power. He could not brook the bondage to which men had bowed for ages. "Reformation" was the first word of public warning which broke from his youthful lips, and the hope of it was the solace of his declining years. The difference between Milton and Johnson may be traced, not only in these great features of mind, but in their whole characters. Milton was refined and spiritual in his habits, temperate almost to abstemiousness, and refreshed himself after intellectual effort by music. Johnson inclined to more sensual delights. Milton was exquisitely alive to the outward creation, to sounds, motions, and forms, to natural beauty and grandeur. Johnson, through defect of physical organization, if not through deeper deficiency, had little susceptibility of these pure and delicate pleasures, and would not have exchanged the Strand for the vale of Tempe or the gardens of the Hesperides. How could Johnson be just to Milton?

I

CHRISTIANITY THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR.

pass to another topic suggested by Mr. Gurney's book. What is it, let me ask, which has freed the West India slave, and is now raising him to the dignity of a man? The answer is most cheering. The great emancipator has been Christianity. Policy, interest, state-craft, church-craft, the low motives which have originated other. revolutions, have not worked here. From the times of Clarkson and Wilberforce down to the present day, the friends of the slave, who have pleaded his cause and broken his chains, have been Christians; and it is from Christ, the divine philanthropist, from the inspiration of his cross, that they have gathered faith, hope, and love for the conflict. This illustration of the spirit and power of Christianity is a bright addition to the evidences of its truth. We have here the miracle of a great nation, rising in its strength, not for conquest, not to assert its own rights, but to free and elevate the most despised and injured race on earth; and as this stands alone in human history, so it recalls to us those wonderful works of mercy and power by which the divinity of our religion was at first confirmed.

It is with deep sorrow that I am compelled to turn to the contrast between religion in England and religion in America. There it vindicates the cause of the oppressed; here it rivets the chain and hardens the heart of the oppressor. At the South, what is the Christian ministry doing for the slave? Teaching the rightfulness of his yoke, joining in the cry against the men

who plead for his freedom, giving the sanction of God's name to the greatest offence against his children. This is the saddest view presented by the conflict with slavery. The very men whose office it is to plead against all wrong, to enforce the obligation of impartial, inflexible justice, to breathe the spirit of universal brotherly love, to resist at all hazards the spirit and evil customs of the world, to live and to die under the banner of Christian truth, have enlisted under the standard of slavery. Review of Gurney's Letters, 1840.

CHARACTER OF THE NEGRO RACE.

I pass to another topic suggested by Mr. Gurney's book. According to this, and all the books written on the subject, emancipation has borne a singular testimony to the noble elements of the negro character. It may be doubted whether any other race would have borne this trial as well as they. Before the day of freedom came, the West Indies and this country foreboded fearful consequences from the sudden transition of such a multitude from bondage to liberty. Revenge, massacre, unbridled lust, were to usher in the grand festival of emancipation, which was to end in the breaking out of a new Pandemonium on earth. Instead of this, the holy day of liberty was welcomed by shouts and tears of gratitude. The liberated negroes did not hasten, as Saxon serfs in like circumstances might have done, to haunts of intoxication, but to the house of God. Their rude churches were thronged. Their joy found utterance in prayers and hymns. History contains no record more touching than the account of the religious, tender thankfulness which this vast boon awakened in the negro breast. And what followed? Was this beautiful emotion an evanescent transport, soon to give way to ferocity and vengeance? It was natural for masters, who had inflicted causeless stripes, and filled the cup of the slaves with bitterness, to fear their rage after liberation. But the overwhelming joy of freedom having subsided, they returned to labor. Not even a blow was struck in the excitement of that vast change. No violation of the peace required the interposition of the magistrate. The new relation was assumed easily, quietly, without an act of violence; and, since that time, in the short space of two years, how much have they accomplished! Beautiful villages have grown up, little freeholds have been purchased, the marriage tie has become sacred, the child is educated, crime has diminished, there are islands where a greater proportion of the young are trained in schools than among the whites of the slave States. I ask whether any other people on the face of the earth would have received and used the infinite blessing of liberty so well. Ibid.

EVERY MAN GREAT.

Every man, in every condition, is great. It is only our own diseased sight which makes him little. A man is great as a man, be he where or what he may. The grandeur of his nature turns to insignificance all outward distinctions. His powers of intellect, of conscience, of love, of knowing God, of perceiving the beautiful, of acting on his own mind, on outward nature, and on his fellow-creatures, these are glorious prerogatives. Through the vulgar error of undervaluing what is common, we are apt, indeed, to pass these by as of little worth. But, as in the outward creation, so in the soul, the common is the most precious. Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless, compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky: and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few. Let us not disparage that nature which is common to all men; for no thought can measure its grandeur. It is the image of God, the image even of his infinity, for no limits can be set to its unfolding. He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks. But he is still great. You may shut him out of your houses; but God opens to him heavenly mansions. He makes no show, indeed, in the streets of a splendid city; but a clear thought, a pure affection, a resolute act of a virtuous will, have a dignity of quite another kind, and far higher than accumulations of brick, and granite, and plaster, and stucco, however cunningly put together. The truly great are to be found everywhere; nor is it easy to say in what condition they spring up most plentifully. Real greatness has nothing to do with a man's sphere. It does not lie in the magnitude of his outward agency, in the extent of the effects which he produces. The greatest men may do comparatively little abroad. Perhaps the greatest in our city at this moment are buried in obscurity. Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love; and this may be found in the humblest condition of life. A man brought up to an obscure trade, and hemmed in by the wants of a growing family, may, in his narrow sphere, perceive more clearly, discriminate more keenly, weigh evidence more wisely, seize on the right means more decisively, and have more presence of mind in difficulty, than another who has accumulated vast stores of knowledge by laborious study; and he has more of intellectual

greatness. Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than another who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of different countries. It is force of thought which measures intellectual, and so it is force of principle which measures moral, greatness,—that highest of human endowments, that brightest manifestation of the Divinity. The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard. Among common people will be found more of hardship borne manfully, more of unvarnished truth, more of religious trust, more of that generosity which gives what the giver needs himself, and more of a wise estimate of life and death, than among the more prosperous. In these remarks you will see why I feel and express a deep interest in the obscure,—in the mass of men. The distinctions of society vanish before the light of these truths. I attach myself to the multitude, not because they are voters and have political power, but because they are men, and have within their reach the most glorious prizes of humanity. Address on Self-Culture.

GULIAN C. VERPLANCK.

GULIAN CROMMELIN VERPLANCK is, as his name indicates, of German descent; yet he remarks, in one of his addresses, "I cannot but remember that I have New England blood in my veins; that many of my happiest youthful days were passed in her villages." He was born in the city of New York about the year 1781; graduated at Columbia College in 1801, studied law, and then went abroad, and passed several years in Great Britain and on the continent. On his return, he became interested in politics, and was elected to the State Legislature. He had very early a reputation for scholarship and taste, but published nothing under his own name till 1818, when he delivered an address before the New York Historical Society, which soon passed through several editions. In 1822, he accepted the Professorship of the Evidences of Christianity in the Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York; and two years after published Essays on the Nature and Uses of the Various Evidences of Revealed Religion, which have been much admired, not only for the clearness of their argument, but for the beauty of their style.

For eight years from 1825 Mr. Verplanck was a member of Congress for the city of New York, and as such secured the respect and admiration of his associates, by his fine manners, dignified bearing, and extensive acquirements. In